co v e r p ag e cont e st
HUMAN RIGHTS
w inn e r
I l i sa M i l l e r mo on
I believe in equal rights for all human beings. We are not all created equal. However, we are all of
equal value.
I struggled to write this because most of my childhood I had to justify my own existence. As an adult,
I have worked diligently to move forward and become the human being I was born to be.
I was raised in a conservative Mennonite family and community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At a
very early age I knew that the beliefs I was being bombarded with did not agree with my own reason
or common sense.
Women were considered to be deceitful, unworthy, overly emotional and inferior beings.
These ideals were not merely perpetrated by the men in my life, but equally by the women. I remember a particular moment when I was eight years old. My mother was sitting at the dinning
room table sipping her coffee. I can still see the gold shag carpet, the wallpaper with roosters and
the avocado kitchen appliances behind her. She said, “I just don’t’ like women! They are so conniving, backbiting and untrustworthy.”
I thought if she didn’t like women, she must not like herself or me for that matter.
That was clearly a disturbing revelation for my eight-year-old.
How could I possibly embrace myself as a Divine Creature if I chose to accept these perceptions?
Perceptions solidified in the name of religion.
I left my childhood home when I was 18 to attend college and never looked back. I knew this was
my opportunity to design the life that I desired to live. My artwork became an instrument of healing,
my salvation. We can allow our experiences to define us, or we can gather the gifts from our experiences and choose to evolve. The gifts I’ve gathered are compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness and transformation for humanity and myself.
I made a deliberate decision to celebrate women through my artwork in direct defiance of my
upbringing. It has been an ongoing journey of healing that enabled me to release the negative
impressions regarding my gender. I’ve taken the time to do intense self-work to rewrite the scripts
embedded in my mind. When I discarded the unfavorable influences in my life it opened up space
for amazing people to enter. My hope is that my images inspire healing, self-empowerment and a
sense of being whole for all women.
We are Divine creatures with many facets. The physical is only one facet. We are physical, spiritual,
emotional, intellectual, passionate and we are “More Than.” The moment I embraced myself as a
Divine Creature I knew no limits to my creative expression.
My mission statement: “Celebrating the Strength, Passion and Divinity of Women through Color”.